They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace -- not when American missiles are around to derail any talks that might hamper the profitable operations of the Washington war machine.
On Wednesday, missiles from an American drone destroyed a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola, killing at least 15 people, with women and children reportedly among the dead. The ostensible target was a gathering of Taliban fighters, who control the surrounding area in this border region with Afghanistan.
But the real target of the attack, no doubt, was the peace process now underway between the local militants and the new Pakistani government. As AP notes:
The explosions came as Pakistani authorities and Taliban militants exchanged dozens of prisoners in the latest step in a peace process that is stirring growing alarm in the West. NATO claims [that] militant incursions into Afghanistan have increased.
This is a familiar pattern of the worldwide Terror War launched by the Bush Administration. We saw it a few weeks ago in Somalia, when national unity talks between the government and insurgents were disrupted at a delicate stage by the "targeted assassination" of a rebel leader (and the usual assorted civilians) by U.S. missiles.
In the American imperium, subject nations are not permitted to work out their internal conflicts on their own -- especially if this involves a cessation of hostilities that leaves any group or faction disfavored by Washington still standing. Obliteration of the disobedient is the ultimate goal, as Hillary Clinton put it so well the other day. But the Terror War policy of disrupting peace talks has some short-term objectives as well. These include the continuation of the war profiteering that now greases the entire American system; and, perhaps above all, the ape-like show of dominance that gives such deep psychological satisfaction to the pathetic, stunted, needy wretches who control our politics and our political discourse.
What's going on in Lebanon? Nothing you haven't seen before -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other places where "the United States is basically instigating and funding civil wars."
So says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil -- better known perhaps as the "Angry Arab," for his indispensable website of the same name. AbuKhalil was born and raised in Lebanon and has an intimate knowledge of troubled land's warring factions there -- and their external backers. Needless to say, the American media's framing of the current flare-up of violence in Lebanon is the usual sinister caricature of reality, with "bad guys" attacking "our friends" out of pure, malevolent, world-gobbling evil.
In fact, "our friends" in Lebanon are actually in league with our allegedly erstwhile friends Al Qaeda. The Hariri faction backed by the Bush Administration is drawing upon the most extremist Sunni armed factions in an attempt to counteract the power of Shiite Hezbollah. This is of course just a continuation of current American strategy in the region, as Sy Hersh outlined last year: giving arms and money to extremist Sunni groups allied with al Qaeda in order to ward off Shiite factions making trouble in our client regimes.
This in turn is part of a broader, more long-standing strategy, going back to 2004, as we noted in a recent report: a global program of arming and funding militias and other violent "non-state actors" to foment trouble where Washington wants trouble, and pressure recalcitrant regimes to bend to the imperial will.
And no, Washington is not "behind" every twist and turn in Middle East politics. But American interventions, direct and covert, are responsible for exacerbating and intensifying conflicts, enflaming sectarian and ethnic divides (or literally building giant concrete walls between them, as in Baghdad today), bolstering tyrannical and/or ineffectual, illegitimate leaders whose misrule provoke more strife, suffering and conflict.
In an interview this week on Democracy Now, AbuKhalil cuts through the corporate media cartoons to give a truer picture of the outbreak in Lebanon:
I think that people may remember, back in the 1980s, the United States government, for two years in the administration of Ronald Reagan, deployed troops from ’82 to ’84. And there was a civil war, and the United States was supporting the rightwing militias of Israel in Lebanon, and they used the discourse of supporting the central government of Lebanon.
Something similar is taking place right now in Lebanon, and this is very much similar to what’s happening in Sudan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States is basically instigating, funding and arming civil wars in all those places. We hear a lot about this inability of the international community to tolerate armed militias. Of course, Hezbollah is an armed militia, but so are the pro-militias of the government. There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post indicated that this government of the United States spent $1.4 billion to prop up the administration of Siniora in Lebanon.
And basically, what happened in Lebanon in the last few days is a partial coup d’etat that was in response to a full coup d’etat that was engineered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel from behind the scene back in 2005, capitalizing on the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
And things have gotten to this point because America basically is responsible, more than their clients in Lebanon. I mean, there were ideas of dialogue in Lebanon, and things were moving in that direction, and then, suddenly, lo and behold, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States for the Near East, David Welch, shows up in Lebanon, and he basically wanted to stiffen the resolve of the clients and to basically prevent the possibility of dialogue. And then, Walid Jumblatt, one of the clients of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon today, escalated by deciding on taking the issue of disarming Hezbollah, which is supported at least by half of the Lebanese; and Lebanese parties, including clients of the United States, [had] agreed that the issues of disarming Hezbollah should be left for internal dialogue of the Lebanese themselves...
This [the current violence] is something that experts have warned the United Nations about. If you push things to that point, the other side is going to lash out, and they did lash out, even if one, like me, does not like the scenes of these militias and armed thugs running into the streets of Beirut and so on. But basically, we have to say that this is the doing of US foreign policy, and this is the true face of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East.....
We have to say that this level of intense tensions and conflict and animosity is the product of a deliberate American-Saudi policy of instigating a Sunni-Shiite conflict, the likes of which Lebanon has never seen. I mean, even somebody like myself who comes from a split background—my mother is Sunni, and my father is Shiite—I mean, we’ve never seen anything like this. Saudi media, with the full cooperation of the United States, have been for three years mobilizing the Lebanese opposition, because that’s the only thing they have....They have been [doing] serious propagandizing to [split] Sunnis from Shiites in order [to] create a militia that can stand up to Hezbollah.
Back at his website, AbuKhalil notes:
What is quite ironic is that Lebanese Forces' media (like LBC-TV) are gleefully airing calls for Jihad... by (Hariri- and Saudi-funded) Salafite groups in North Lebanon. Do they not know what those groups' views are of Christians? They even refer to Lebanese Christians as "crusaders". These are clones of Al-Qa`idah, but the Lebanese Forces seem to be embracing them.
And so in Lebanon -- as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia -- the policies of the Bush Administration have only produced more extremism, more terrorists, more violence.
Can we not discern a pattern here, a clear intention? The "War on Terror" produces terror; it's part of the "creative destruction" that the militarists used to boast about, when they dreamed that their crimes of aggression, torture and murder would lead future generations to "sing songs about us," in the immortal words of Michael Ledeen.
This quote is often attributed to Richard Perle, but it comes from Ledeen's call for "total war" in a speech at American Enterprise Institute on October 29, 2001. Ledeen followed this up with a piece on National Review Online in August 2002, when he mocked Brent Scowcroft's concern that an invasion of Iraq could turn the Middle East into a cauldron. Ledeen's response:
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.
Ledeen is no mere kibitzer on the rightwing gravy train. He is one of the architects and chief abettors of the cauldronization -- the slaughter and suffering -- we see across the Middle East today. As the Washington Post noted back in the glory days of 2003, when these bloodthirsty wretches were still strutting around beating their chests about their importance:
One [of Karl Rove's advisers] is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that "America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism."
The two met after Bush's election. "He said, 'Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,' " Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove "something you should be thinking about." More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.
Nowadays, of course, Ledeen skulks around pretending he opposed the invasion of Iraq: the kind of astonishing lie one might have heard in a Nuremberg courtoom back in the day, and one easily refuted. (As is his current lie that he has always opposed an attack on Iran.) But he, Rove and all the other facilitators of the militarists bear a direct and substantial share of responsibility for the murder and chaos that continues to erupt across the tormented region.
UPDATE: And now Bush is proposing an even more direct U.S. military intervention in Lebanon. Speaking in Cairo -- on yet another one of his pointless trots* around the cauldron (maybe he wants another fancy sword -- or just some more good smoochin' -- from the Saudi king) -- Bush offered to help the Lebanese army "respond more effectively" to Hezbollah. He also took the opportunity to -- what else? -- blame Iran for everything happening in Lebanon, claiming that without the backing of the devilish Persians, Hezbollah -- which, as AbuKhalil noted, is supported by almost half of the Lebanese population -- would be "powerless."
So Bush will soon have yet another proxy war playground to while away his time before retiring to stick his snout in the same corporate trough that has so enriched his fellow war crminal, Tony Blair -- who has already made almost $20 million in corporate pork in less than a year after leaving office.
Who says crime -- especially war crime -- doesn't pay?
*Note. Some might think that Bush is touring the region to build support for an attack on Iran. But that kind of head-knocking and arm-twisting is left to Dick Cheney (who took an ominious swing through the cauldron not long ago). Junior is too witless for any hard-core dealing -- although no doubt he will bluster and bellow to his hosts about Iranian perfidy and "doin' God's will" and whatever else vomits up from his murder-rotted brain.
To divert from atrocity and anguish and political folly for a moment: over at the MySpace page, there are four new songs up, with more to come. These are demos, self-produced, rough-sketch possibilities for the second album, which, if all goes well, might be recorded this summer with Nick Kulukundis, the extraordinary producer, arranger and musician. There are also two songs from the first album with Nick, Wheel of Heaven (available through iTunes), still up on the page. Give 'em a listen if you take a notion.
Civilians are still streaming out of Baghdad's Sadr City, despite the announcement of a truce late last week designed to avert – or at least give the appearance of diverting – a major bloodbath from an all-out assault on the densely-populated area by U.S. forces and their local junior partners. Announced on Saturday, the deal was immediately eviscerated by U.S. forces, who bombed three neighborhoods in Sadr City that very afternoon, as dpa reports.
Oddly enough, when Iraqi government forces tried to enter disputed Sadr City quadrants the next day, they were attacked, the New York Times reports. The Times' intrepid correspondents, including the ever-reliable spin-funnel Michael Gordon, professed to be shocked – shocked! – at such rude behavior, which they presented as clear and unprovoked violations of the nascent truce. Naturally, they omitted any unseemly and unnecessary mention of the American bombing of the day before.
The fighting is Sadr City is concentrated along a demarcation line, Al Quds Street (Jerusalem Street), between areas loyal to nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr and areas now under the control of the violent sectarian factions backed by both the United States and Iran; i.e., the Iraqi "government." In addition to bombing residential areas and leading Iraqi government troops in attacks, American forces are also erecting a massive concrete wall, 12 feet high, along three miles of Al Quds street, in attempt to seal off the recalcitrant neighborhoods. Of course, it was considered poor form – or rather, an international outrage – when the Soviets did this kind of thing in Berlin; but in our brave new world, it is now an accepted, even celebrated policy. (Just like torture, concentration camps, aggressive war, warrantless surveilance, etc.) During the past 17 months, throughout the vaunted "surge," U.S. forces have been building ghettos all over Baghdad and elsewhere in the country, often turning over these enclaves to the tender mercies of "former" insurgents and terrorists who, now in the pay of Washington, rule them as private fiefdoms. This, you understand, is what is now known as "liberation."
Civilians still living in the slowly closing concrete trap say they are almost as fearful of a genuine truce as continued warfare. That's because a real truce would allow the violent sectarians empowered by Bush to operate with murderous impunity in their neighborhoods, replacing al-Sadr's draconian militia with something even worse, as McClatchy Papers reports:
Inside Abdul Hassan's home, furnished with colorful rugs and flimsy mattresses, Sakran and his wife hoped for calm after weeks of bombardment and gun battles, but they feared the worst is yet to come. "We just want peace," Sakran's wife, Suham Bresam, said, her eyes heavy from sleepless nights. "This agreement happened and I was up all night from the gunshots and strikes."
Her home was in the middle of the fight on the edge of the district where U.S. forces are holed up in abandoned buildings and the Iraqi Army has set up checkpoints, and she hadn't left it in weeks. A nearly completed wall built by the U.S. military isolates the area, and her modest dwelling is scarred by bullets and shrapnel…
Nowhere in Sadr City is safe from an air strike, Bresam said, but Abdul Hassan's home was safer than her own. At home, the Iraqi Army shoots erratically after a roadside bomb blast hit civilians, and when the Mahdi Army shoots rockets at U.S. aircraft, missiles rain on people's homes.
"It's just the civilians who get hurt," she said....
Before the battle began in late March, the area was peaceful…but they lived in an atmosphere of intimidation. When women were beaten by the Mahdi Army in her neighborhood or Sunnis killed, they objected quietly and never challenged the militia....
But they also fear the Iraqi Army. Videos captured on cell phones are being sent as messages from person to person. Abdul Hassan pulled out his phone to show a public hanging of three men. They stood on police trucks with nooses around their necks as a crowd of people looked on and then the trucks were driven away and the men were hung. Another showed men shot by the Iraqi Security Forces and then burned. In the background Iraqi soldiers spoke.
"Don't say in the name of God the most compassionate the most merciful. They are animals," one soldier said....
Abdul Hassan said the videos were shot in the southern cities of Karbala and Nassiriyah, and he worried that the same would happen in Sadr City if the Iraqi Army had free reign.
"We haven't seen a solution that will give us peace," he said. "We don't want it to be like Karbala or Nassiriyah. We don't want people executed in the streets."
But there will be no peace in Sadr City. The "surge" will continue along the Al Quds line. Bombs will keep falling from American planes, missiles from drone-craft operated by button-pushers bunkered in Nevada will continue to rain death on houses and apartment blocks, and the extremists embraced by George Bush will keep hanging and shooting people in the streets.
II. Meanwhile, civilians in Mosul are likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of a major assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Patrick Cockburn of the Independent reports that one of Iraq's largest cities has been turned into a "ghost town," as likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of an attack by U.S. and Iraqi forces. The latter have launched the attack because, they say, the city has been under the control of "al Qaeda in Iraq" for many months.
That's right; as Juan Cole notes, one of Iraq's largest cities has been in the hands of what is supposed to be America's deadliest enemies in Iraq – even while Americans has been bombarded with propaganda about the "success" of the surge. This is the same city, by the way, that is routinely trumpted as a "success story" in the glittering career of General David Petraeus, architect of the "successful" surge. Petraeus was in control of Mosul during the first months of the war, when he was regularly touted – by Michael Gordon of the NYT, among others – for his remarkable "counterinsurgency techniques" and peerless "nation-building skills." So "successful" were Petraeus' efforts that the current assault to dislodge "al Qaeda in Iraq" is a carbon-copy of a similar operation launched earlier this year, as Cole reports:
Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."
Ninevah governor Duraid Kashmula admitted to Al-Hayat that Mosul "has come to dominated by the leaders of al-Qaeda as a result of the delay in the military operation in the city."
What??! Mosul is Iraq's second largest city at 1.7 million, and it is under the control of "al-Qaeda"? How long has this been the case? All this time? While the US press was reveling in the "calm" in the country?
Mosul was also taken over by insurgents in 2004 – while U.S. forces were destroying Fallujah. It has long been flashpoint for terrorist attacks, reprisals and strife throughout the war. And now, for the second time in less than a year, it is being subjected to a major attack to wrest it away from insurgents. This is the kind of "success" that has fuelled Petraeus' meteoric rise to his current perch in command of the entire "Central Command" of the Terror War.
But what is happening in Mosul today? Patrick Cockburn has the story:
Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.
Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements"....
I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger....
That's Petraeus' legacy of "success" in action!
There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been deteriorating over the last six months. Mr Goran, who in effect runs the city, said that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March, including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.
The official theory for this is that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.
This is probably over-simple. Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have restarted and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa'ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa'ida awakening councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa'ida.
I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.
How far from peace…. There will be no peace in that tormented land now, because the ones who started the war, and keep it going, see no profit in peace – unless, as we've said before, it is the peace of the grave, with all resistance to their will, their interests, their agenda crushed utterly. There is no middle way for the war-and-dominion machine that bestrides our system. There is only the "obliteration" of resistance – or else, as in Vietnam, ignominous retreat after years of pointless death and ruin. But what do they care? In the words of Suham Bresam: "It's just the civilians who get hurt."
Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Outside Agitators: Another Missile Attack Aimed at Peace Talks Thomas married into the multi-billionaire Bucksbaum clan, owners of about 60 million square feet of shopping malls. Thomas lives better than the average reporter, in Bethesda, in "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, currently valued at $9.3 million...
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign Honestly, why even bother with pwogwessives like fd? He's obviously carved a comfy niche for himself in the corporate DNC and can manage to maintain the delusion that Obama is some kind of pwoggie savior. Nice work if you can get it...
There's no ...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond mistah Charlie: check the podcasts; I did an interview with Howard Zinn a few weeks back to discuss 'A peopel's History of American Empire'
Jimmythem: youa make-a me laugh: like you, i like bikes and weed, and liberals make me feel weird and uncomfo...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond The U.S. has had a remarkably consistent policy in the Middle East for nearly 40 years, selling arms to as many factions as possible, and pitting them against each other whenever it can. The "war on terror" just makes this foreign policy more obvious...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond Um. Chris?
You should check your permit.
In most counties, shootin' trolls in a barrel is not exactly above boards...
HA!
oh, that was made to order.
Love,
Scott
Fire Alarm: Feeding the Flames at Traitor's Gate I am in the militia in my state, and the militia is not what the mainstream media make us out to be. However this thing plays out, you and your loved ones will stand a better chance of coming out the other end by getting plugged in to the militia ne...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond I'm glad I stopped by here today, because I need diagnosis: I'm a motorcyclist who smokes wacky weed and likes shiny black boots. Creepy liberal hippies are people who smoke wacky weed, but evil Nazi faggots like shiny black boots. Both hippies AND N...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond In the interview you quote from Democacy Now, Professor As’ad AbuKhalil states "There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post in...
Brilliant Disguise: Bush Torture, Obama and The Boss
Saturday, 19 April 2008
I. We offer now a telling juxtaposition of stories. First is the Guardian's new excerpt of Phillipe Sands' new book, Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty, and the Compromise of Law. (Another extract was published earlier in Vanity Fair, which we examined here.) Sands' book lays out in great detail the process by which the highest officials of the American government – including the President, Vice President and the Secretary of Defense – with great deliberation and malice aforethought constructed a regimen of systematic torture which they knew, to a certainty, violated existing American and international law.
The earlier Vanity Fair extract depicted how the "Principals" of the National Security State developed the specific tortures to be used on uncharged captives held indefinitely in concentration camps, secret prisons, and foreign torture chambers. The new Guardian extract show how the White House torture system was then put into practice and refined in the field.
These decisions and actions were flagrant and obvious violations of United States law. Sands quotes the ruling of the Republican-dominated Supreme Court ruled in 2006:
In June 2006, the Supreme Court overturned President Bush's decision on Geneva, ruling it to be unlawful. The court confirmed that Common Article 3 applied to all Guantánamo detainees. It was as simple as that. Whether they were Taliban or al-Qaida, every one of the detainees had rights under Common Article 3 - and that included Mohammed al-Qahtani.
The majority opinion, reaffirming the "minimal protection" offered by Common Article 3, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens. One of the Justices went even further: Common Article 3 was part of the law of war and of a treaty that the US had ratified. "By Act of Congress," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote pointedly, "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes', punishable as federal offences, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel."
First read the Guardian extract, and see how what happened in Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere) flowed directly – directly, and in detail – from Donald Rumsfeld's pen, with the approval and at the direction of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Then go to this video clip offered by the Philadelphia Daily News, and watch Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama field a direct question about how he will deal with these flagrant crimes (and others committed by the Bush White House) if he becomes president. Would he, Obama was asked, order his Justice Department "to aggressively investigate if crimes were committed?"
It goes without saying that Obama does not give a straightforward answer to the question. He does not simply say: "Yes. I will aggressively investigate all criminal activity by the Bush Administration and bring the perpetrators to justice." Instead, he twice offers a rather odd locution: he will, he says, order his attorney general to "review the information already there" and find out if there are inquiries that "need to be pursued." Obama's emphasis on basing his actions on "what we know right now" seems puzzling, until you tie it to a later passage in his reply, when he speaks of his attitude toward impeachment.
Obama says that any decision to pursue "investigation" of "possibilities" of "genuine crimes" would be "an area where I would exercise judgment." He stressed the need to draw a distinction between "really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity." He said he would not want "my first term to be consumed by what would be perceived by Republicans as a partisan witch hunt."
He then tied his thinking on torture, illegal wiretapping, aggressive war and all the other depredations of the Bush Regime to his stance on impeachment:
"I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings. And I've often said, I do not think that would be something that would be fruitful to pursue. I think impeachment should be reserved for exceptional circumstances."
In other words, very strong, credible, evidence-based charges of launching a criminal war of aggression based on deception is not an "exceptional circumstance" worthy of the investigative and prosecutorial process of impeachment. It might just be a "very dumb policy." Very strong, credible, evidence-based charges of knowingly, deliberately creating a regimen of systematic torture is not an "exceptional circumstance" worthy of impeachment; it might not even be worth further investigation by the Justice Department. It too could just be a "dumb policy" that we should forget about – especially if Republicans are going to make a fuss about it.
In any case, it is obvious that to Obama, "what we already know" does not constitute "exceptional circumstances" – otherwise he would already be pressing for criminal investigation, via the impeachment process or by calling for a special prosecutor. (Which would be essential for investigating a Justice Department which is itself deeply implicated in the torture system and other criminal conspiracies.) He has pointedly not done so, because he doesn't think it would be "fruitful to pursue" credible (in fact overwhelming) evidence of aggressive war and crimes against humanity committed by American leaders.
Obama closes on the usual high rhetorical note, declaring that if he in fact found out that "high officials knowingly, consciously broke existing laws and covered up crimes with knowledge aforethought...then no one is above the law."
Yet the plain fact is that the recent revelations by Sands and others that "high officials knowingly, consciously broke existing laws and covered up crimes with knowledge aforethought" are simply strong confirmations of what has been lying in plain sight for a long, long time.
For example, I began writing, in print, about the Administration's use of "extrajudicial killing," torture and other Terror War crimes in November 2001. (More on this below.) Where did I dig up this secret information? From the Washington Post and New York Times and other mainstream outlets, where Administration officials – flush with their newfound power and popularity – were at that time boasting openly of "taking the gloves off" and inflicting physical torture on captives, either directly or through proxies in foreign "rendition" centers. Only when the pictures from Abu Ghraib appeared in 2004 – showing in vivid detail exactly what Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had ordered American personnel to do to their captives – did the "senior government officials" stop supplying spin to the compliant media about their macho forays "into the dark side."
And suddenly, a strange amnesia set in across the political and media establishments. Suddenly no one remembered "senior officials" boasting about torture. Suddenly no one remembered Cheney himself going on national television to announce that U.S. security forces were going to "the dark side, if you will." As a result, it has taken years for the deliberate, systematic, planned and approved use of torture to come to light again, piece by piece – with government officials and media mandarins expressing their great shock at each new revelation.
But here is a vital point that should be stressed again and again: The planned, approved, systematic use of torture against uncharged captives held illegally under the Geneva Conventions – which have the full force of U.S. law – has never been a secret. Never. Never. Any ordinary American citizen, like me, could find out about it, without any special effort, simply by reading beyond the first few paragraphs of routine, mainstream news stories.
It has always been out there – always – for anyone who wanted to know. It is an utter impossibility that the thousands of political operatives and players in Washington – elected officials and their vast cadres of staff, journalists and editors, lobbyists, think tank analysts, appointees to government agencies, and all the others whose professional lifeblood depends on the information relayed by house organs of the Establishment like the Times and Post – did not know what an ordinary man from rural Tennessee knew as early as November 2001. It is simply impossible.
And it is certainly impossible that an intelligent, informed, and ambitious political operative like Barack Obama did not know. And if for some inconceivable reason he did not know what us yokels knew in 2001, then he certainly knows it now. But he pretends that he does not know. He pretends that it is still an open question – "an exercise of judgment" – whether these crimes should even be investigated further, much less prosecuted. He pretends – or even worse, actually believes – that we are not in the grip of "exceptional circumstances," but are apparently just rolling along with business as usual, aside from a few "dumb policies" which he will tinker with and set right.
All indications continue to suggest that those who look to Obama to undo "the terrible damage done over the past eight years," as Bruce Springsteen put it in his public endorsement of Obama last Friday, will be disappointed – especially as they watch Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other perpetrators of war crimes enjoy their comfortable, lucrative retirements in the years to come.
II. And let's not forget: We don't even know the full extent of the gulag. In addition to the multitude of individual ordeals that we still have no inkling of, there are almost certainly more secret prisons that we don't know about – and perhaps secret codicils to the known documents, authorizing even more barbaric tortures. To quote torture lord Rumsfeld himself, there are still many "unknown unknowns" about the Terror War gulag that we are yet to discover.
Thus the crimes reconfirmed and fleshed out by Sands and others are only glimpses of the full, horrific reality. For example, in Sands' extract, he tells of the three categories of torture devised and approved by the White House. "Category III" was the full whack, including waterboarding, the partial-drowning technique long prosecuted by the American military as a particularly heinous form of torture. Sands says that Category III techniques "were to be used for only a very small percentage of detainees" – the most "uncooperative and exceptionally resistant individuals," the so-called "worst of the worst" in the terminology of the torture lords.
But recall that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other top officials routinely referred to all of the captives in the Guantanamo concentration camp as "the worst of the worst," the most dangerous men on the planet, etc. – prime candidates for the harshest tortures. Yet we now know – and have long known – that hundreds of these captives posed no threat at all to anyone. Many of them had been sold into captivity by bounty hunters or personal enemies, or rounded up in random sweeps, or kidnapped off city streets or from their homes. We also know from the mountains of evidence gathered by some of the Pentagon's own investigations (of "small fry" and "bad apples," offered up as scapegoats for the sins of their leaders), that the worst approved tortures soon spread throughout the Terror War gulag, all the way down to the former torture chamber of Saddam Hussein that George Bush made his very own: Abu Ghraib. There, the highest category of torture was applied to some of the lowliest prisoners, men rounded up in the massive, blind sweeps by American forces, caging thousands upon thousands of innocent people. (At one time, the International Red Cross estimated that between 70-90 percent of the American captives in Iraq were innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, much less of being "Category III" terrorists.)
You cannot compartmentalize the evil of torture. You cannot tame it, domesticate it, separate it into neat categories. It is a sinister acid that eats through all walls, and spreads throughout any system or organization that practices it. You begin with "light slapping" and loud music, and you end up with waterboarding, beating, and murder. There is no exception in human history to this process.
And there is no avoiding the knowledge that America's leaders "knowingly, consciously broke existing laws" against torture. This is precisely why they went to such enormous lengths to pervert the clear and unambiguous letter and spirit of the laws, devising a ludicrous, self-absolving system of executive tyranny, whereby the president's Justice Department appointees simply declare that whatever the president orders is "legal," even if it conflicts with existing law. Torture, murder ("extrajudicial killing"), aggressive war – all is permitted for the "commander-in-chief," whose imperial immunity extends to every minion carrying out his orders. As we have noted often before, this is a version of the Nazi führerprinzip translated into the political idiom of modern America.
Again, perhaps Barack Obama believes it is not an "exceptional circumstance" that a U.S. presidential administration openly claims to rule the Republic on the basis of Adolf Hitler's philosophy of governance. Certainly, Obama's deliberate inaction on these issues – no bills to stop funding for the war in Iraq, no bills to launch investigations of the torture system, not even a measure to overturn the Military Commissions Act, which stripped the ancient right of habeas corpus and officially enshrined the führerprinzip in U.S. law – constitutes an implicit accommodation with great and glaring evil. It is hard to see in all of this how he represents what Springsteen called in his endorsement "the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years...a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit."
A leader truly interested in the collective destiny of his nation would not be "nuancing" questions of torture and war crimes. The pursuit of justice for these atrocities would not be an area for "exercising judgment," or worrying about bad PR from the opposition party. It would instead be a burning passion, driven by the understanding that it is only this pursuit of justice that holds out the slim hope of even beginning to "undo the terrible damage done" by the Bush Regime – and by its bipartisan predecessors in imperial arrogance.
Afterword How easy was it to see what was happening – and what was coming down the pike? Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Moscow Times in November 2001:
It won't come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won't come with "black helicopters" or tanks on the street. It won't come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.
As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there; legislatures, elections, campaigns – plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the "consent of the governed" will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among this elite, and a degree of free debate will be permitted, within limits; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to govern or influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized – usually by "the people" themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by an impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, not thoughtful citizens, and left ignorant of current events by a media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will often act in secret; for reasons of "national security," the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, the murder of "enemies" selected by the leader, undeclared war, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new "security structures" targeted at the populace. In time, all this will come to seem "normal," as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone.
It will all seem normal..Indeed, the Bush administration is now openly considering the use of torture to compel testimony from suspected terrorists – or anyone designated as a suspected terrorist, Slate.com reports. True, a few girlie-men are still fretting about "constitutional rights," but the clever dicks in the Oval Office have that one sussed: recalitrant prisoners can always be exported to friendly regimes, like Egypt or Kenya, where they don't bother with such prissy concerns. Information "extracted" there can then be used in U.S. trials.
Wouldn't evidence acquired by such heinous and unconstitutional methods be thrown out by the courts? Ordinarily, yes – under the old Republic. But in America's new weather, the judiciary will no doubt "give heightened deference to the judgements of the political branches with respect to matters of national security," [as former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr predicts]. And if all else fails, a handy executive order can always "reinterpret" the Constitution to accommodate the needs of "national security."
Normal.... Armed with the sweeping new powers of the "USA Patriot Act" passed late last month, the Bush administration is acting to "shift the primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence," the Washington Post reports. In other words, the feds will move from protecting the people to spying on them. The CIA has also been given authority to take part in domestic surveillance and investigations for the first time....
It won't come like a storm. It will all seem normal. Like a break in the weather, a shift in the wind.
Yes, all normal, business as usual. No "exceptional circumstances" here. ***
Yeah right, it's all the fault of "Atheists" who "mock god's word".
The current junta continuously proclaims its love of jeezus and your invisible sky daddy, starting with the ghoul in chief, who proclaimed a "righteous war against evildoers", who stated gawd told him to "smite the Iraqis". These people are christians, not "godless atheists". They've packed the bureaurocracy with their bahbull thumping ilk, have poisoned the military with their "dominionist" pals, filled the judiciary with the same enemies of democracy, christian fundamentalists, to enable their crimes. We have a quasi-theocracy now, thanks to folks like you who demand "gawd's law" be substituted for our Constitution, that secular document of genius, that held these monsters at bay for over 2 centuries.
Now that your fellow travelers for christ have taken over, you blame Atheists for the result, but I see no Atheists among the criminals, just fanatics who want prayer in schools, "holy war" and Armageddon, and the sociopathic monsters who exploit their insane delusions for their goal of world mastery. I see none of these so-called "gawdly people" weeping for the tortured prisoners, or the murdered Iraqi victims of this monstrous warcrime. I don't hear them screaming over our use of depleted uranium weapons against an innocent people. I hear none of them denouncing any of the atrocities of this depraved gang of thugs, or demanding "in god's name" they be brought to justice. I just see Hagee, and Robertson, and Dobson, men of gawd all, bawling for more blood, more torture, more death, in gawd's name, hoping for a "nukular" solution to the problem of Iran.
And now, you state here, that your loving daddy in heaven is content to let the millions suffer, because "we want no god to rule over us..." Obviously, you too think that voice in you head is god, whispering his displeasure to YOU, just as he once whispered it to the swine in the WH. Which of you do we believe? Or is it just your own latent sadism that whispers to you, rejoicing in the unspeakable agony of "unbelievers" everywhere?
Obviously, whatever it is you worship, is a fiend, no better than the gawd-fearing junta you complain of, a demon who allows torture and murder on a global scale, impervious to the screams of the dying, merely because some people don't "believe". And that is your privilege. Believe whatever superstitions you want, but don't dare blame those who don't share your delusions, and had no say or part in the atrocities sponsored by your co-religionists. They and their myths are huge factors in the destruction of the nation. And that attitude of "death to unbelievers" has enabled the national acceptance of torture as OK, as long as WE do it, to "really bad guys", as Chris so lucidly discusses here.
Obama is just fooling the powers that be to thinking he is cut of the same cloth as our heroes Reagan, Kennedy and Bush thats my story and i am stickin with it
I wish I could believe that, dougie, I really do. But forgive this ancient grandma for being too old, and having seen too many horrors for too long, to put on the blinkers now. He's a corporate sheep, in populist sheep clothing, and wouldn't be where he is, if he were not. And,unfortunately for us, he's the only candidate we are going to be "allowed" to vote for against McInsane, the junta's hand-picked, senile, brainless sock puppet, a clone of his gibbering predecessor. Democracy, it's a beautiful thing.
At this point, I will settle for a cessation of the dark side, and a return to a United States that is professedly and, at least to some degree, in actuality, decent. If the price for that is that GWB is comfortably ensconced in Highland Park and whiles his days away at the Bush Library at SMU (I'm in the Dallas area), rather than enduring endless procedures in the Hague, then so be it.
BO is making a reasoned judgement, like the one Ford did, that bringing justice to the past would, at the same time, be all-consuming in the present--and a pretty good case for that proposition can be made. If he is elected, and, say, Common Article III isn't honored in all cases, and the Army manual isn't applied in all instances, that would be very wrong and I would come to profoundly regret my support.
We shall see. I will concede, in advance, that, with his background (Yale Law, law school prof etc.), I also thought that Bill Clinton would be solid on civil liberties, and I came to be very, very disappointed on that count
Democrats have to avoid any appearance of 'partisan bickering' and court the favor of conservative Republicans by giving them everything they and their lobbyists want, so they will then work cooperatively with Democrats for the good of the country. Above all, don't mention torture, civil liberties, human rights, or empire. We know how well that has worked before.
I spent a couple of years in candle-lit rooms, sitting in a small circle of friends, grooving LSD and playing the White Album backwards, trying to decipher the weird poetry of people we thought were geniuses on the fast track to enlightenment because they made such pretty music.
I'm unable to speak for my entire generation, but I had for long been done with that nonsense when Springsteen (who was still a kid and still chasing dope dreams) cut his first album. Parts of that record were pretty good as I recall. It looked as if Bruce might make something of himself, and eventually he did. Tramps like Bruce being born to run, he ran himself nearly to death before he reinvented himself as "The Boss" and started making records entirely filled with really good music.
Today Springsteen is a legend, widely hailed as a musical genius. I won't argue with that verdict -- but I will argue that musical genius doesn't necessarily drive anyone to a deep understanding of things like politics, economics, law, and diplomacy. Neil Young, for example, admits that he once voted for Ronald Reagan. Bruce Springsteen will get my respect if, ten years from now, he can show as honest as Neil Young and admit that he once thought Barack Obama was a good idea.
It may help Bruce through the ordeal if somebody would send him a copy of Peter Brown's book on the Beatles. . . .
It was a nice rant & made us all feel good, but Obama is a side-show.
We're going to elect Grandpa McCain. The presidential campaign proper hasn't even started yet & that's already clear. Popular sentiment reinforced by the usual vote-rigging. Immediately upon election, McCain, who clearly has no ability for the job & probably less interest, will be happily shoved aside by his vice president. Just as Cheney shoved aside Bush.
So who will that VP be? Will it be someone from Cheney's office? Someone from Rummy's? Will it be a Congressional hack? Could it be The Hammer? Will Karl Rove pick the VP, or will Cheney?
What a slick system this is! Let vain, egotistical presidential wanna-bes exhaust themselves, spend a billion bucks apiece, only to get out-hustled at the last minute by the Republican VP & a corrupt electoral system. A VP who coasts effortlessly into office.
McCain may be an even better foil that GW Bush. McCain might actually pass away from natural causes during his term, elevating the VP to legitimate command.
Four years of campaigning and we still do not know the name of our next leader. But we can speculate. Knowing both the requirements for the job, and the pool of men available, who do you think Cheney's successor will be?
Obama is a lawn jockey, an oreo, an Uncle Tom. He is a charlatan. Glen Ford over at Black Agenda Report has Obama's number.
The only reason to choose Obama is wrongheaded partisanship in a fettered mindset that believes several things:
1) We can only choose those candidates that the mainstream infotainment media anoint as The Chosen
2) There is a meaningful difference between Democrat and Republican at the Federal level -- and especially in the Senate and Presidential races
3) The act of voting is not corrupted by the Electoral College
4) The act of voting is not corrupted by external chicanery (i.e. electronic vote machine hacking, polling place goon squads for intimidation, ballot manipulation)
5) The result of the popular vote will not be discarded by the US Supreme Court (see Bush v Gore)
6) The voting process has not been corrupted by money to the point where no candidate cares about individual citizens who struggle below the upper and upper middle economic classes
7) The fact that Barack Obama is funded by people who support the Bush-Cheney agenda is irrelevant
8) The fact that Barack Obama is advised by people who support the Bush-Cheney agenda is irrelevant
9) Barack Obama's pledge to "do whatever it takes" to protect Israel is irrelevant and/or is good diplomacy
Since all 9 points are wrong in their perspective and conclusion, there is no reason to vote for Barack Obama.
But of course, foolish NPR/PBS worshiping soi-dissant "liberals" and "progressives" think it's a huge accomplishment to have a (fake) Black man running for President. So they'll vote for him, ensuring that the current foreign and domestic policies continue uninterrupted -- albeit with a shiny, happy facade of fake-humanism.
The question to Obama needs to be re-phrased. "Senator Obama, you're on the record as saying that impeachment needs to be reserved for 'exceptional circumstances'. Given that this administration has started a war of aggression (the 'supreme international crime' according to the American prosecutor at Nuremburg) based on lies to the American people, the US Congress, and the United Nations, and given that this administration has implemented a widespread program of systematic torture of people who are only suspected of guilt (which the President has admitted was done with his full knowledge and blessing) and whose innocence has been corroborated by their subsequent release, could you please give us two or three examples of the 'exceptional circumstances' that in your opinion are deserving of impeachment?
Evan writes, "Since all 9 points are wrong in their perspective and conclusion, there is no reason to vote for Barack Obama."
This reasoning would apply to ANY Democrat or Republican. It has nothing to do with Obama's racial authenticity, which is obviously important to Evan. The issue of authenticity is indeed being debated in the Black Agenda Report, but nobody there is fouling the site with terms like "oreo" and "lawn jockey."
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